Think It Through Tiles

I remember playing with these tiles and booklets when I was a little girl. I remember LOVING them and being absolutely fascinated by them!
Well, maybe a year ago, my mom sent them onto me for Jacob. I've told her how incredibly high strung/hyper/intelligent he is and she lovingly sent these very activity laden tiles on to me. I tried them a few times within this past year and each time Jacob was just not quite interested. He'd sit for a minute with me before running away. The puzzles/games inside definitely take some thought.

Well, he's 4 now. And he's even more high strung, etc than he was last year. So last night, while lying in bed after a particularly stressful day (mostly because Jacob likes to wreak havoc on everything - and most likely because he's just bored), I decided he and I were going to start nightly school. Like every night, a 30 minute block of time that we focused on learning. My informal lessons throughout the day just haven't been working as well as I wanted. When he climbed in bed with me before the crack of dawn (wide awake mind you), I told him my plan. Bad timing on my part as he was so excited there was no hope of him going back to sleep.

All day long, I was researching different structured things we could do together. I finally decided on some block printing and basic reading. As I reached into my stockpiled school supplies drawer, what do y'all think I found?

You guessed it!! The Think It Through tiles and books!!!!! I knew it was time to break them out again - and I had a feeling they'd be a success. Gosh, I love those mom feelings!!!

The tiles and books are awesome because they focus on several different things at once - counting, patterns, matching, reading, logic, word association . . . even addition, subtraction and simple algebra as well as several other things. Obviously, I picked through the booklets to find the simple parts for Jacob and we began!!! Below is what the old school tiles and booklets look like (the ones I have are at least 20 years old - thank goodness my very non pack-ratting mother held onto them!!!). I'm showing you how they work - this isn't the one Jacob did, but maybe we'll try it tomorrow evening :)

First, you place the tiles in numerical order after choosing the puzzle you want to try. This puzzle is finding the missing shape in the pattern. Each square is used only one time . . . hopefully you smart people are able to figure it out by my pictures
Secondly, you would match up the letters and numbers from the pictures into the tile holder like so :)
After this, you check the pattern and hope like heck that when you flip the tiles over (by closing the tile holder, flipping over, and then reopening), the pattern matches :)
And you have a little party when it does!!!
To be perfectly honest, I think Jacob got a little overwhelmed today by it all. He was doing great step by step, but I think he would have been confused if I had made it one long continuous flowing thing. Does that make any sense at all lol? We are going to try again tomorrow - I think these will be awesome.

And yes, we're still going to be reading and writing.

Oh and one last thing . . . I think Emily may be a step ahead. When I put her in bed and she realized Jacob was going to be staying up, I don't think I've ever seen her lower lip quiver like it did tonight. She was so upset that she wasn't also staying awake!!! I was so sad to see her so sad I actually cried *stamps "BOOB" on my forehead*! She was excited with the tiles and is doing great recognizing numbers and letters . . . maybe this will be good for her too?

Have a great night everyone - thanks for keeping up with my fam :D